“What was that?” Xuhn asked as Mortugal resumed a normal position. Had Mortugal gone crazy? Xuhn could have fallen off and died.
“The snow feels cold on my body,” Mortugal said, “plus I wanted to lift your spirits a bit.”
Xuhn didn’t know about spirits, but Mortugal had surely raised Xuhn’s heart beat rate.
Xuhn didn’t reply.
“I am sure the people Ritika and her mother killed were bandits,” Mortugal said, “innocent people don’t stay in the forest at night.”
“You never know,” Xuhn said darkly.
“Believe me, boy, a Farton knows!”
That cheered Xuhn a bit. Mortugal had his own problems— no wonder he had gone to slumber for hundreds of years. But he was trying to lighten the mood, and it was best to appreciate his efforts.
“I guess a Farton does know,” Xuhn said in a more cheerful tone. “Where are you heading now?” he asked. He remembered he had never questioned Mortugal as to where exactly they would go to in Dragonland.
“To the capital of Dragonland,” Mortugal replied, “my clan used to control it before. I assume they do so now as well. I am not sure if the old Dragon king still lives, but whoever is the current king should have the answers to our questions.”
They flew and flew and flew. Xuhn dozed off, exhausted from the sitting. The sun was up when he awoke. And they weren’t flying either.
They were on a snowy cliff, overlooking what appeared to be a small mountain. But it wasn’t a mountain. It was a castle made of solid ice from what its dazzling nature suggested.
“Where are we?” Xuhn asked.
“The capital,” Mortugal replied, his tone grave.
Xuhn peered hard at the entrance of the castle. There were at least four dragons there, apparently guards. They were much larger than Mortugal in size. They were true dragons, ones with scales, and Xuhn was sure they could breathe fire and roast anyone who tried to enter the castle by force.
“So?” Xuhn asked Mortugal.
Mortugal didn’t say anything. Xuhn recalled Mortugal saying that the other dragons had laughed at his fur before.
“Do you know who those dragons are?” Xuhn asked.
“I recognise a couple,” Mortugal said, “and they weren’t my best friends. The others I don’t know. I guess they were born after I went to slumber.”
That didn’t sound like it would be easy to enter the castle.
“I wonder if we could just fly to the top and enter through a window,” said Mortugal, more to himself than to Xuhn, “that was where the king’s room was before.”
“Well, let’s first do the guards and then the window?” Xuhn offered, raising a brow.
“Can be done... I am afraid though,” Mortugal said.
“That they will laugh at you?” Xuhn asked.
“I lose my confidence—and my head too— when someone laughs at me.”
“Don’t worry,” Xuhn said and patted the dragon, “I am not afraid.”
He smiled at the dragon and Mortugal nodded.
“Hold tight, then,” Mortugal said and leapt from the cliff. He glided down to the guards, who became alert at once when they spotted Mortugal.
Mortugal landed metres away from them. There was a lot of hostility in the eyes of the guard dragons, and Xuhn felt his guts become cold.
“I, er, wish to meet the king,” Mortugal said. There was no confidence in his tone. Perhaps he was being too self-conscious about his fur.
For a moment the dragons just looked at Mortugal, as though examining him. They ignored Xuhn altogether though. Apparently Xuhn was too insignificant for their attention.
Then recognition settled over the face of one of the more aged looking dragons.
“Hey, I know you,” he said, in a voice of mockery. “You are Mortugal!”
“Is he the one that lost his scales?” one dragon asked the senior one, “I remember the tale from my childhood, for my mother used to sing it to me as a lullaby. The weak-heart whose lost his scales and put on fur!”
The dragon laughed and the others joined instantly. Xuhn caressed Mortugal’s back to give him some hope.
“I want to meet the king,” Mortugal repeated.
“What for?” one asked, “I heard you went to sleep in a lake because you were too shy to fly with the fur.”
“That’s none of your business,” Mortugal said in a sour tone. The dragons were all larger than him, which was undoubtedly the reason they were guards in the first place. Xuhn hoped Mortugal wouldn’t pick up a fight, because he wouldn’t win by any chance.
“Look, he’s angry!” the senior dragon said. One of the dragons touched Mortugal’s fur with his claw, apparently out of curiosity. Mortugal hit the guard with his own claw.
“So you want a fight?” the guard asked, scowling.
“I want to meet the king,” Mortugal said resolutely. “I have no business with you.”
“Fine,” the senior dragon said, “the king has no interest in meeting weirdos like you, and so we can’t allow you to go inside our holy castle.”
Mortugal glared at the guards for a moment. Then he turned around, flapped his wings and made towards the cliff.
“That was wise of you not to pick up a fight,” Xuhn said, though disappointed that they couldn’t meet the dragon king.
“Look down, are they looking towards me?” Mortugal asked Xuhn. Xuhn looked down at the guards of the entrance. All of their heads were locked in Mortugal’s direction.
“All of them are,” Xuhn said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mortugal said, “though it would have been better otherwise. It’s time for the second option.”
And just before reaching the cliff, Mortugal somersaulted in the air, while Xuhn caught on to the dragon’s neck for dear life. And Mortugal sped towards the top of the castle.
“Wow!” Xuhn cried, feeling dizzy. Down below the dragons had seen Mortugal’s move, and two of them had taken to the air already. Mortugal flapped his wings harder. Very soon he broke through a window of ice at the top-most room of the castle.
There was a dragon inside, writing something on a scroll using his claw as a pen. He wore a short red cloak that didn’t hamper the movement of his wings. He also wore thick chains and bracelets, but his remarkable feature was his golden horns.
This was the dragon king without a doubt.
The dragon king stood up on seeing Mortugal and Xuhn. Though rage flooded his face at the sudden interruption, there was also a lot of astonishment in his eyes.
“So you are the new king, Albor?” Mortugal said to the dragon king, apparently recognising him.
“Mortugal?” Albor said.
“That’s me.”
“My father kicked you out of our clan, why have you returned?” Albor asked. He didn’t appear any friendlier than the guards.
Mortugal leapt onto the table on top of which Albor had been writing. And then Mortugal caught the dragon king’s throat with his claws.
“Tell me, where is Hatred?” Mortugal demanded. The dragon king responded with a burst of flame from his mouth. Mortugal fell back, and Xuhn had to jump from the dragon’s back.
Mortugal stood up. The part of his chest where the flames had hit black. He opened his jaws wide at the king in a display of threat.
If only Mortugal could spew flames, Xuhn thought. That would have been a big plus point in the current situation.
“I don’t want to harm such a lowly being like you,” Albor told Mortugal. “Leave my castle now!”
“I want the answer!” Mortugal said. Never had Xuhn seen that look of intense anger on Mortugal. “Where is Hatred? I know you know—”
And to make matters worse, the two guards arrived at the window.
“Is he troubling you, your majesty?” One of the guards asked the king.
“Yes, take him away—”
But before the guards could do as much as enter the room, Mortugal moved faster than the wind and grabbed the king’s neck with his
claws from behind, such that the king could not spew flames on him.
Xuhn rushed to Mortugal’s side as the guards warily came inside.
“He’s the king of the dragons,” one of them said to Mortugal. They were trying to take the matter slowly, inching closer to the furry dragon as they tried to distract him with words.
“Back off, or I promise I will kill him,” Mortugal said, and for once the guards froze because Mortugal tightened his grip on the king so that the latter let out a groan and raised a limb at the guards to indicate them to stop.
“Albor,” Mortugal said to the dragon king, “what has happened to you, eh? What has happened to the entire dragon race? Do you remember those days when you were a child and your mother used to tell me to teach you flying?”
“Those days,” the dragon king croaked, “you were a real dragon… now you aren’t.”
“Sure, I maybe a weirdo now,” Mortugal said, “and I have fur now instead of scales. But look at yourself; you have joined hands with the devil that turned me into this!”
“Who told you to fall for Corpsia?” Albor croaked again.
“Corpsia had little fault,” Mortugal said. “Malthur used Corpsia because he always planned to make me what I am today. Why have you joined hands with that evil being, eh?”
“What am I supposed to do then, eh?” Albor said, and a tear rolled down his face. “He’s made my father a prisoner!”
“Your father? Made a prisoner?” Mortugal asked. Xuhn saw him loosen his grip on the king’s throat, and the guards seized the changed. They lunged at Mortugal, and as the furry dragon prepared for defence, the dragon king slipped from his grip and fled to the safety of a corner of the room.
Xuhn watched paralysed as the two guard dragons pinned down Mortugal. They hit him everywhere they could lay hands upon. Xuhn prayed that Mortugal would use his fart, which at the moment didn’t seem funny at all.
“Use it, Mortugal!” he yelled at the dragon. But Mortugal wouldn’t, maybe because he feared that Xuhn too would become unconscious. For some more time, Mortugal and the two guards fought each other. For every one blow that Mortugal delivered the guards, he received two. Xuhn noticed that the guards were abstaining from spewing flames on Mortugal unlike the king before. Some of the ice on the ceiling of the room had melted, and apparently the guards didn’t want to cause any more damage to the room.
The dragons, despite all their might, were silly creatures at best. Couldn’t they simply have made a castle of stone? Xuhn thought.
“Cover your nose!” Mortugal cried to Xuhn, as one of the guards landed a punch on his head. Both the king and the guards frowned at these words of Mortugal, while Xuhn covered his nose. There was a sound and Xuhn watched amazed as the guards and the dragon king dropped down, struggling to breathe.
Mortugal staggered over to the fallen king.
“Where is the Hatred?”
The dragon king’s eyes swelled with tears, as Xuhn slowly began feeling the urge to breathe.
“T- the lake,” Albor said.
“What lake?” Mortugal yelled.
“Where you… slumbered… map there… don’t know more.”
“Map? You mean one leading to Hatred?”
“Yes… I am sorry.”
And the dragon king became unconscious.
Then suddenly, two more guards appeared at the window. But just as they entered, they covered their noses.
“I can’t breathe!” one said. Mortugal lunged at them, and the three dragons fell out of the window.
Xuhn kept looking at the window, frozen. Just what Mortugal had done?
Xuhn ran to the window and looked down. Far below was Mortugal, climbing the heights towards Xuhn. The two guards were down on the ground way below, and the other guards were at Mortugal’s tail. Xuhn glanced at the three unconscious dragons in the room. His lungs screamed for air, and he feared he might take in a breath and meet the same fate as the dragons. Xuhn clenched his fists and jumped down from the window.
The world danced.
He saw the sky, the snowy landscape, Mortugal and the castle in rapid succession. The cold air slapped his face all the while. It might have been mere moments long, but for Xuhn the fall seemed to go on forever.
The snowy landscape got larger and larger and so did the guards chasing Mortugal.
Wait, where was Mortugal?
Suddenly, Xuhn’s fall came to a halt as he felt a strong grab on his shoulders. He looked up, his head spinning. It was Mortugal.
Failing to control his stomach, Xuhn puked. Most of it fell on the guards who were below. Mortugal sped towards the cliff, carrying Xuhn with his claws. It was a very different experience of flying than being on Mortugal’s back. Mortugal was above him this time, not below and that wasn't reassuring at all. Xuhn looked at his legs and the fast changing features of the ground below. It was dizzying. Xuhn closed his eyes.
After a long time, Xuhn opened them. He took a look behind to see that the guards were still pursuing. But they were far behind. Xuhn wanted to ask Mortugal why the guards were so slow, but he tasted vomit in his mouth and didn’t have any wish for conversation.
After sometime, Mortugal took an abrupt turn and swooped to the ground. He flew left, then right, then left again. And then he landed at the foot of a mountain.
“Should get them off our tails,” Mortugal said. “Those lazy dragons may have bulk, but they sure are slow!” Xuhn knelt down on the ground. He took some snow and put it inside his mouth. The cold bit his tongue and he had to cough out the snow. Anything to get rid of the vomit taste.
“Now what was that?” Mortugal asked, watching his doing.
“Never mind,” Xuhn croaked. There was a boulder nearby and against it he leaned. Seeing Mortugal, he gaped.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mortugal asked.
Xuhn pointed at Mortugal’s tail. The part of it that had been in contact with the snow on the ground had changed colour from yellow to white.
“I never knew I can do that!” Mortugal gasped.
“You didn’t?” Xuhn said.
Mortugal lay down on the snow and began rolling like he was some child. After sometime, most of his fur turned white, even the spot on his chest that had been blackened by Albor’s flames. Encouraged, Mortugal rubbed his face on the snow and it too changed colour.
“You sure can do a lot of cool things,” Xuhn said. Mortugal examined his body up and down in disbelief.
“It’s good camouflage,” he said.
“Look there!” Xuhn pointed at some dots in the sky, which were undoubtedly the guard dragons. Mortugal grabbed Xuhn, and hugged him such that the view of the sky was totally blocked from him. All Xuhn could see was Mortugal’s snowy chest.
After some moments like that, in which the sound of Mortugal’s heartbeat thundered in Xuhn’s ears, the dragon released him.
“Gone,” Mortugal said, looking up at the sky, “haha, the idiots!” Sure enough, the black dots were nowhere to be seen in the sky.
Xuhn stared at Mortugal’s white fur and recalled that it hadn’t changed colour when snow had fallen on Mortugal’s back during their flight. He told this to the dragon.
“Yes,” Mortugal said, “I don’t get that too.” The dragon picked up a handful of snow from the ground.
“I think it’s got to do with contact with the ground,” Mortugal said. “Only snow that has come in contact with the ground can change my colour.”
Xuhn guessed Mortugal was probably right, as nothing else could explain the case.
“It’s Dragonland after all,” Mortugal said proudly, “the soil has got magic in it.”
Xuhn thought about all the harassment Mortugal had received from the guards, and wondered if Mortugal’s pride had any point. But Xuhn decided against voicing his thoughts. If Mortugal was proud of his land, who was Xuhn to tell him he shouldn’t be? Xuhn decided to ask him the important stuff.
“The dragon king was saying about some map,” Xuhn s
aid.
“Yes,” said Mortugal, “he was saying something about a map being present in the lake I was sleeping in.”
“But wouldn’t you have found it already if there was such a map in the lake?” Xuhn said.
Mortugal thought for a moment before speaking.
“Nah,” he said, “you know, I went to the lake very furious. I didn’t take much of a look around before closing my eyes, and losing myself in the land of sleep.”
“You know,” Xuhn said, “I always wonder why you went to that specific lake in Bindi, so far from Dragonland.”
Mortugal shrugged.
“I wish I knew. Though I wonder, if it was the map.”
“So it’s a back trip to Bindi, eh?” Xuhn said. He felt ecstatic about it. It would be great to help end the war between the werewolves and the vampires by being so close to home. Who knew, maybe the Hatred itself was located somewhere near Bindi.
“I guess,” Mortugal said, a tinge of reluctance in his voice.
‘What’s the matter?” Xuhn asked the dragon.
“If we travel just a bit north, we might find Malthur,” Mortugal said longingly. Xuhn had never told the dragon about meeting Malthur back in Werewolf country. While Xuhn understood the dragon’s thirst for revenge, at the moment ending the war was most important. Plus, Xuhn had a bad feeling that whether they wanted to or not, they just might come across Malthur again, since the zombie king was hell bent on protecting the Hatred.
“I know you want to revenge upon him for making you what you are,” Xuhn said, “but look at you, Malthur did give you some really cool powers!”
“I guess that’s right,” Mortugal admitted. “The powers he has given me knowingly or unknowingly have proved useful despite their stupid natures, specially the fart. I almost don’t want to become a dragon of scales and fire, and remain as I am now— wait, I shouldn’t say that!”
“Let’s keep that aside for now, shall we?” Xuhn said.
Mortugal nodded.
“Important things first.”
Chapter 25
And they flew south.
Only a few hours had passed and they were still in icy Dragonland, when they saw a sight of action in the distance. There was a black dot—a flying carpet of the Bnomes, that was moving right and left as though the pilot Bnome was having a hard time controlling the carpet.
The Banishment of the King Page 16